Flex Marketing

Do you only need marketing help SOME of the time? Then you need a ‘marketing on demand’ solution…that’s where FlexiPass comes in. If you have investigated getting marketing support in the past and decided against it because you don’t have enough on-going work to sign up for a monthly package, this option might be for you. FlexiPass was designed for businesses that only need sporadic help with their marketing, but still want to benefit from a favourable price. What does a FlexiPass provide? It provides support with your marketing implementation for a set number of hours that clock down as they are used over time. Just like a pay-as-you-go mobile plan, when you need another pass, you top up! FlexiPass is available for 20 hours and is topped up in 20-hour increments. We have just one FlexiPass available at the moment. If you are interested, get in touch for more information. The reason FlexiPasses are in limited supply is because most of our time is tied up with ongoing monthly packages, however, we reserve some availability to help businesses who want us to dip in and out of their marketing as it suits them. A great choice for smaller businesses who want to tap into some marketing expertise. To explore the types of marketing implementation (including graphic design), we can help you with, visit this page of our website https://lnkd.in/g5ZHzMu3 or get in touch for a chat about what you have in mind. _ _ _ #marketing #outsourcemarketing #smallbusiness

Have you had an in-depth look at your audiences recently? I often find that businesses haven’t re-visited the question of who their audience is as often as they should. Things change. New audiences appear. One audience may split into multiple. Some audiences’ needs evolve. Some audiences shrink and if you don’t keep your eye on the ball, it could be costing you big time as revenue also shrinks. The benefit of regular audience analysis is the chance to spot weaknesses, threats and opportunities. You can then create strategies to address any of these observations and take action. Action could include talking to your audience(s). It could involve finding “look-alikes” for more of the same people you identify as being the easiest to serve/work with or the most profitable or the most enjoyable.  What about indirect (or secondary) audiences? Overlooked by some, these are the audiences that enable you to connect with your end customer. For example, if you are a videographer, these would be all your connections that are in adjacent industries or jobs…that could be marketing professionals who organise videos for their employer or clients, it could be photographers who are only working with still images, it could be a wedding venue that is often asked for service provider recommendations by their customers or even a website developer who regularly tells their clients that videos would help to bring their story to life. Then there are also the more obvious indirect audiences like resellers/distributors. The one thing indirect audiences have in common is that YOUR role is often to help them ‘look good’. Whilst some indirect audiences may not be gaining any financial reward from the business you gain from the end customer, if they share the same end customer, they have effectively helped them by giving an introduction to you. This helps foster their own customer relationships, which greatly benefits them. Brand alignment is an important consideration with indirect audiences too. It really pays to explore which indirect audiences your business has and how you can help them solve their problems and ‘look better’ to their own customers. Brand affinity and loyalty can often be hatched and nurtured through these sorts of interactions that create an emotional connection and effortless customer journeys. Once audiences have been identified, then there’s questions of how you find them, how you prioritise them etc. etc. These are the types of things I help clients work through as part of Flex’s marketing strategy services. Reach out if you need some help navigating what can often be a messy puzzle of direct and indirect audiences to sort through! _ _ _ #marketing #marketingstrategy #targetmarket

With Anzac Day this week, the topic of bravery came to mind for this post. In business, some marketing decisions involve stepping into the unknown – this can take great courage for business owners and leaders, especially where it involves considerable investment of resources.  I see my role as helping clients feel supported on that adventure. By definition, an ‘adventure’ is where the outcome is unknown, but it is often associated with fun, learning, growth and other positive aspects. Making sure my client is well-prepared for the adventure involves me calling upon my past experiences and in-depth knowledge to guide them; mitigating risks wherever possible, optimising opportunities and minimising expense. Often the goal is maximising return on investment…but at the very least, it involves learning and carrying those learnings forward to inform future marketing decisions. If the marketing adventures involve working with agencies, I ask the right questions on behalf of my clients and make sure no ‘i’ is left undotted or ‘t’ is uncrossed. I let my clients know where they should take caution and manage their expectations where needed. At the end of the day the final decisions and money at stake belong to my clients… I will always respect the level of bravery involved on their part and appreciate the privilege of them choosing me to be on the journey with them. Having me on and by their side hopefully helps it feel a little less scary, a lot less hard work and considerably more enjoyable. _ _ _ #marketingstrategy #marketing #businessstrategy

Last week I posted a link to an article written by Claudia, our freelance marketing executive. She shared 5 ways to leverage your social media in 2024 – here is a link in case you missed it https://lnkd.in/gyKiFxBB Claudia is passionate about helping businesses get the most out of social media and she does a great job of making brands shine in a crowded marketplace. Whether your social media needs are to do with strategy and planning or for help with implementation and keeping it more regular, Claudia would love to get involved. And Flex Marketing can also help you look at the bigger picture and figure out where this piece of the puzzle fits in amongst the rest of the marketing pieces. Get in touch for a chat. _ _ _ #socialmedia #contentstrategy #marketing

Wondering how you can better leverage social media? Check out this article written by Flex Marketing’s marketing executive, Claudia. She is passionate about helping businesses get organised with their socials…let us know if you are keen for a chat about how we can help. _ https://lnkd.in/gBmsQH6B _ _ _ #socialmedia #socialmediatips #marketing

Choosing the right marketing channels can be overwhelming…a bit like selecting an Easter egg! Do you choose Google ads and Facebook ads or just one of them? A mix of traditional and digital advertising? What about PR? How about jumping onto the latest social media platform when you are already finding it hard to keep up with two currently? Here are 5 top tips for selecting marketing channels that are a good fit for your business: 1.    Don’t try and be across them all – better to be very focused on a few, than spread too thin and not doing any of them well 2.    Fish where the fish are – a big part of knowing your audience well is knowing where they hang out…then hang out there too. It’s okay if your audience doesn’t do email or social media – find another way to connect with them! 3.    Trialling is an option – if you are looking to expand on your original channel selection, then you don’t have to jump in with two feet to a new one…plan to commit limited resources for a finite time so that you can analyse the return on investment before deciding whether to continue 4.    Research your industry – what channels are your competitors involved in? How active they are on each channel is probably a good indication of how engaged their customers are on them. For example, if you see a social media account that’s been around a long time with limited activity and followers, then chances are your competitor considers it low priority and it might not work for you either 5.    Evaluate your resources – ensure you fully understand what is involved with a new channel and your capacity for the related workload before taking it on. Frequency is often important for success on many channels – if you announce that you will be emailing every month and end up missing 3-4 months, this isn’t great for your brand reputation, especially if integrity is one of your highest values. Regardless of which channels you use, always manage expectations and communicate well _ _ _ _ #marketingmix #marketing #marketingcommunications

Which do you think I should do? Given the choice of spending time on client work OR time updating my own website/compiling my email newsletters…which should it be? Your answer may be client work because that is chargeable. Or it may be both, because they are both part of running a small business. Regardless of your answer, the important factor here is time. How we value it, how we spend it…society is generally more concerned about property and money than caring about the precious and valuable commodity of time. I provide outsourcing services to other businesses who need marketing help…however I also use an outsourcing service for my own business. I am very selective about how I use these services, but I know that it makes more business sense for me to spend time adding value to my clients rather than doing administrative tasks in my own business. I enjoy thinking and being challenged; repetitive, mundane tasks don’t light my fire! Anything that I can create a clear set of instructions for, such as running reports on my website performance, adding articles to my website etc. is a no brainer to give to a VA service to do. Anything that needs my own personal touch, such as writing Linkedin posts and articles, remains with me. What I love about using a VA to do some of Flex Marketing’s own marketing and admin tasks is that I get to experience what it is like to be a customer of an outsourced service provider. This gives me great insight about what is important for my own outsource marketing clients. Do you think about time being a precious commodity? Are you spending your time doing the things that you love most and that contribute the most value to your business? What tasks do you know you should be handing over to others to make better use of your time? #outsourcedmarketing #outsourcingservices #marketingconsultant

Google reviews…got questions around them? Why do they matter? How do I manage them? How do I respond to bad reviews? Can I delete them? How do I get more of them? These and other questions are answered in this article. If you have any additional tips for our Linkedin connections, please feel free to comment below…sharing is caring! _ _ _ https://lnkd.in/gnbtVKzC #googlereviews #marketingtips #onlinereviews #SEO

Delighted to share a client story about the new website I project-managed for Martin Personnel towards the end of last year. A collaborative project with Utopia – Michael Baxter is always a pleasure to work with. If you are involved in logistics or manufacturing and need to hire great temps, then ‘Ask Martin’, the Martin Personnel team and Joy S. Moss Afoa will help you out! And if your website needs an overhaul but you don’t have the time to project manage it, get in touch with Flex Marketing. _ _ _ https://lnkd.in/gDUrbQMc #projectmanagement #websitedesign #marketingdigital

Better late than never! Last year I posted about attending a great Marketing Association Brainy Breakfast about AI and promised that I would share an article, once written, about marketing sector insights that were gathered from the session. That article is now live and linked here. I hope you enjoy the ‘compare and contrast’ way of presenting these insights…using ChatGPT to give its take on AI in marketing and presenting what it said alongside my own take as a ‘real person’ who actually listened to real industry representatives talk about their AI experiences and thoughts so far. I guess ChatGPT has a lot of speculation to go off from its data sources, missing the nuances from real life anecdotes and a human way of interpreting information from body language and other forms of communication you just can’t replicate online! https://lnkd.in/grCk7pfn #marketingconsultant #aiinmarketing #marketingtrends